True Employment Tales

I finally saw this movie the other night:
Yeah, I know. Sometimes I'm a bit behind the curve on things.

I liked this movie for a couple of reasons.

First, I liked it because the suspense built slowly and they scared you, or in this case me, without resorting to showing any actual violence. It was kind of like a Pinter play in that regard, the menace and violence were heightened by only alluding to them and the threat of violence was more scary than the act itself.

Secondly, I liked it because the gal in it was a cutie, yeah, I know, I'm shallow. I could watch her in anything because she had that girl next store freshness and cuteness to her and she had a nice butt to boot.

And finally I liked it because the filmmakers broke the mold when they did their marketing campaign. They built such a buzz around this film back when it came out that by the time it came out everyone was talking about it. Which brings me to the True Employment Tale portion of this post.

When the video of this movie hit the stores people were renting it and buying it in droves. I was still working for Myers Tire Supply back then and as you can imagine a lot of people who worked for the places I sold to were the ideal target customer for this film. Guys in the tire and retread shops were going on about it almost everywhere I went in the week or so after it's release on video and the gals who worked the desks in the offices that issued me purchase order numbers also were chattering about it.

One of my main customers back in those days was a retread shop in Hariman, TN called Tim's Tire. Tim's was one of the few independant truck tire retread shops in the USA and to look at the place you'd think it was the biggest dump you ever saw. But you'd be wrong. Tim and his family, which consisted of him, his brothers, and all their familes, made millions off that truck tire retread shop. But the thing about them was they enjoyed working so every day they'd go in and work in one of the dirtiest, noisest, most labor intensive industries there is today. The other thing about Tim and his family was they were all nice people but they were all devoted evangelical Christians. So it surprised me one day when the young gal in the office asked me if I had seen The Blair Witch Project yet. Being nice, yeah I know, it was a stretch for me to be nice to one of those fundies but back then Tim's was my biggest customer so I had to be nice to everyone in there, I said I had not seen it but that I had heard alot about it and I asked her if she liked it. The gal, who was every bit of 18 years old, nodded yes and she breathlessly told me that every bit of the movie was true and the people who died in it got what they had coming to them because they messed around with witchcraft. I rolled my eyes and I told her that it was just a movie and that no one really died. Well, the young thing did not take lightly to me contradicting her and she insisted it was true and they people really died. I gave her a patronizing smile and I told her that she was mistaken. She gave me the evil eye and she snatched my invoice out of my hand and then she swiveled her seat away from me and back to her computer screen. For the next two years after that she never smiled at me or said a word to me when she saw me there.

In another tire shop in Kingsport, TN a guy who I spoke to every week and who did most of the ordering for his store told me he had just seen Blair Witch and that it was so cool and that it was so sad that those poor kids had to die like that and how wild it was that it was all caught on video. Despite the reception I got from the last person I corrected I had to tell him the truth as well. He scolded me and said that indeed those kids died and that it was all true.

The next week I went in that Kingsport shop and my guy walked up with a sheepish grin. He said, "You were right man, that movie wasn't real after all. I seen that girl on Conan O'Brien the other night." He and I got along great after that and he always tried to give me the biggest order he possibly could.

Ah the power of movies, it affects us all differently.